Reply #11: We don't yet know what dose is harmful to humans... [View All]

It's unclear whether the amount we eat substantially increases our cancer risk or not. It certainly might, but like I said, lots of "natural" foods (i.e. vegetables) have plenty of naturally-occuring chemicals that are toxic in high enough doses, but are tolerated in the small amounts that we eat (for instance lots of plants produce natural pesticides that would be toxic/mutagenic to us in large doses...)

Actually, eating anything whatsoever has the potential to cause cancer since metabolism creates free-radicals which can damage DNA. But most are absorbed by the cell before they can do damage DNA, and for those that do manage to damage DNA, most of that gets repaired by a whole battery of DNA repair enzymes. Cells are designed to absorb a certain amount of DNA damage, including that from our diet/metabolism, otherwise we'd never survive infancy.

Undoubtedly people are doing more research now to get a better understanding of whether the levels of acrylamide in food are enough to raise mutation rates. Personally, I'd cut back on fries and chips and not worry too much about the rest... :-)

-SM